Different Kinds of and Barrington, Illinois — April 24, 2015

The reason for having these meetings is that on the spiritual path our mind does not stay too long. When we come to a meeting like this we get inspired. We say, “This is the true path. This is what should be given our highest priority.” We go home and start meditation, feel happy, and that great euphoria lasts a few days. After that we’re back to where we were.

That is why it’s important to reignite our enthusiasm by these monthly meetings. In fact, if we could have these meetings more often would be even better. How often should you have a satsang? The best is to have it every day. But if we cannot meet every day, at least once a week. And if that is not possible, then once a month should be the minimum. For those who are living overseas, if they can come and attend a meeting and hold on to that excitement for a year, once a year may be good enough.

But if you cannot come for once a year, might have to wait for the next life for spiritual enlightenment. Somebody had asked my Master, Great Master Hazur Maharaj Baba , the same question. He said, “How often should we come to have your darshan?” He said, “If possible you should see me every day. If, of course, you’re not living there with me, you cannot see me every day, once a week would be fine.” And he said, “How about if we are living far away?” He said, “Once a month should be good enough.” “What if we’re living beyond the seven seas in foreign countries?” He said, “Then once a year is good enough.” He says, “What about if we cannot come once a year?” He said, “Then you might as well prepare to come for another life.”

So, this is not something that we easily hold on to, and that is why it is necessary to be in the company of the truth. Satsang. Satsang literally means “the company of the truth.” And where is truth? Where we speak about truth, where we share truth, where we share the teachings of the who gives us the knowledge of the truth.

This word guru that I’ve just used has also been used in so many senses that people have come up to me and said, “What is the difference between different gurus that you talk about? Sometimes you say there is a Sadhguru, then there’s a Satguru, then you talk of other gurus of different levels of consciousness. What is the difference, because we don’t know. We think the word guru means a teacher, any teacher.” The truth is that the word guru—which is, of course, a Sanskrit word, the origin of the word guru is in Sanskrit—its etymology says, its roots say, that it comes from the two syllables, gu-ru. Literally, in Sanskrit, “gu” means a shadow, “ru” means one who can remove it, dispeller of a shadow. Translated, it means one who can enlighten you by removing the darkness of ignorance.

That means one who can transfer knowledge to us. That is why a teacher who teaches us, gives us knowledge, we have been referring to as a guru. But in the spiritual context, a guru is considered far more than a merely a teacher. The word guru has been used in India, even till today, for several professional workers. In the teaching of music, all the great teachers in India have been called gurus. In teaching dances, dance classes, the teachers are referred to as gurus of those different disciplines. The word guru has been widely used. Sometimes it has been used in a derogative sense also. Sometimes a great cheat is called, “He’s quite a guru in his own job.” So therefore, the word guru has been used in all these contexts.

But when we come to the spiritual disciplines, there the guru is given so much eminence. He’s considered almost equal to the creator. In one of the big mantras they speak in , they call it the “Guru Mantra.” That means the mantra relating to the guru. It’s considered next in importance to the Gayatri Mantra, which is a general Hindu mantra for describing the presence of in creation. When they talk of the Guru Mantra, it says, “Guru Brahma” (guru the creator), “Guru Vishnu” (that means the sustainer of the universe), “Guru Dev…” The same Guru Mantra says, “Guru Deva Maheshwara” (he’s also Shiva). Then it says, “Guru is Sakshat, Par Brahma” (he’s also one beyond this creator). Then he says to such a guru, “Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara, Guru Sakshat Parambrahma, Tasmai, Shree Gurdevo Namaha.” That means I’m saluting that kind of a guru, a guru who’s all in all, everything. In another holy scripture of ours in India we say, “Guru Govind dono khade kiske lago paaye, Balihari Guru aapne Gobind diyo milaye.” Which means: If God and Guru were both standing together, who would I salute? Whose feet will I touch?” The answer is, the feet of the Guru, because without him I would never have known God. So, Guru is given that importance in the spiritual context and considered to be the ultimate creative power made into a human being. They consider that the Ultimate Sat Purush himself resides, the consciousness of the Ultimate resides, in a human being.

The Christian Bible is considered as “the Word made flesh.” The Word was made flesh, made into a body, and could be expressed as the creative power. And what is the Word? The same Word that created everything. “In the beginning was the Word,” John’s Gospel says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and nothing was made that was not made by him.”

When you refer to the Word, you refer to Shabd, you refer to the Bani. When you talk of these words which all are references to something that can be heard— audible things. When you use these audible words to describe the creative power of the whole universe, then we realize that we’re talking of Word made Flesh, that means the Ultimate Creative Power that even created God, resides in a Guru,in the form of a human being. That means the human being, at all times, carries the totality of consciousness with him. When we’re on a spiritual discipline, and we rise slowly to experience higher levels of consciousness, we experience only one at one time. Right now, our physical reality, our physical body and the material reality arising from experiencing what is around us through the physical body, is the only reality. We know nothing else.

When we go to sleep, we’re unaware of this reality, and we create a dream reality, and the dream becomes real for us while we are sleeping. When we wake up, this reality comes into being, dream becomes a dream and unreal. Similarly, when we go to a next level of awareness, called the Suksham Sharir awareness or the astral body awareness, a whole astral world opens up, showing us that’s the only reality, that what we thought was physical was actually unreal and dream like. We go higher up to the causal reality, Karan Sharir reality, and we find that the cause of all things is the only reality—all this was illusion creating experiences for us. But at that time that is the only reality. Then we go higher up and discover our own true self—our , without any mind, without any body, without any senses. We discover that’s the only reality. Everything was made from there.

These experiences generate in us a different level of experience of reality, and we discover what looks real at one stage is not real when you go to a higher level of consciousness. But when you go beyond the knowledge of the self, when you go beyond the knowledge of your atma or soul and discover that you were always been part of the one creative power, that you were never separated from it, that in your True Home there is all the and all the unrealities put together, that everything that took place in all levels was taking place from there and within that area of experience, when you reach totality of consciousness, you discover all realities and all illusions which make realities to be there together.

Huge difference between the awareness of totality of consciousness and the awareness of any other level of consciousness. In totality you discover that you are there at all levels at all times. You’re also there in the illusions that have been created. The show is taking place at all these levels. When we talk of a Perfect Living Master, a Sant Satguru, when we talk of (further adjectives we add to the word guru), when we talk of a Satguru, a true Guru, we’re talking of such a human being who has that awareness with him at all times, not one who has been to that experience and come back to tell us—that is not a Perfect Living Master. Not one who can go when he likes to those areas and come back and tell us. That’s not a Perfect Living Master. A Perfect Living Master, by definition, is one who’s carrying the awareness of totality, and the awareness of all levels, at the very time when he’s just an ordinary human being sitting amongst us.

So, it’s a very big difference. But anybody who reaches that state has the same experience. It’s not that a Perfect Living Master has a different experience. Any disciple of his, anybody who has worked his way up to totality of consciousness has the same experience, seeing the reality is all created by the process of illusion. We have not created these levels of consciousness as shadows or as illusions. We have used the process of illusion, a grand process of illusion, to create reality, to have real experiences. So that is why the whole creation that is around us is an extension of our own self, an extension of our true nature, of our true totality of consciousness to which we belong, which is our true self, and that is from where the whole experience is taking place—at different levels. By dividing into different levels, we have created an immense variety of experiences.

Imagine, when you are only totality of consciousness. Now of course, there’ll be no time/space, no mind, no thinking—we can’t imagine it. But I’m trying to put analogies, just trying to give you comparisons for the sake of understanding. Supposing we were only totality of consciousness in our True Home, Sach Khand. Supposing we are there, and we’re all there. Are we one or are we many? We are one by definition. Ultimately, it’s one creative power. We are one experiencing the many. That means, within the one we are the many. An analogy could be that the ocean is one, but the drops in the ocean are many. But they’re not separate from the ocean, they’re part of the ocean. How would you distinguish between a drop of water in the ocean from the ocean? It’s still part of the ocean. It’s just become a drop. It’s a small fragment, small slice, small point of view, small position in the total ocean.

This is exactly what a soul is. A soul is never separated from its totality. The soul never leaves its True Home. The soul only contracts its awareness to be a small slice, a small part of totality of consciousness, and that’s what we call a human soul. A soul is a unit of consciousness that resides within totality of consciousness—and experience of the one and experience of many is joined. And why should that experience take place? Why should we even consider? We look at the ocean, we don’t look at the drops. We look at the drops, we forget the ocean. What is the purpose of a drop in relation to the ocean? The purpose is to experience the closeness, the Love of its own Totality. If Love is our true nature, and I believe it is, Consciousness per se has certain qualities in it, certain function in it, and the most prominent one is Love.

The ability to identify with another, the ability to experience the other, the experience to become the other, to put yourself totally in somebody else’s place, is Love. True Love is an unconditional experience of that kind, and to generate that experience we have the many in the one, and the many can experience the Love for each other and for the one. It’s a great raison d’etre, a great reason for creation of the many, that if the true nature of God… People say “God is Love.” In what way is he Love if he’s not able to love anybody, if nobody’s there to love God? You can’t say God is Love but there’s no Love there because there’s nobody to love, nobody to love God. Therefore, if within God can be created, not distinct from God but part of God, then the experience of Love takes place right there.

That is why the experience of the many in the one is generated, to have the experience of Love, an experience that never goes away, even till the moment when we become human beings, even when we become other forms of life, even if we’re in a dream state. This experience of Love that generates there, right in our True Home in Sach Khand, never leaves us even if we’re right here. Then what happens? Supposing you enlarge that experience further, and from the individuated self which is the soul you add to it something that can create the sense of time and space, that can create events, that can create space, distances, it can create time and distance. Imagine how many events we can place into that framework. And that framework is provided by attaching an accessory to the soul, which is a body upon the soul, which we call the causal body, sometimes also called the human mind.

The human mind is that body which we attach to the soul to create the experience of a vastness of time and space. Infinite time has been created, infinite space has been created by the addition of one little gadget called the human mind. And the soul, which is life itself, consciousness itself, empowers the mind to begin to work. When the soul empowers the mind, the gadget, to work, the mind begins to work. What does it do? Starts thinking and thinking. Ideas, rationalization, all these things come up because of the mind. The soul is empowering the mind, the mind is functioning, and we have a variety of experiences now of events and time and space, and we put the events on a timeline. And we introduce a new law for making those interesting events, the law of cause and effect, also known as the law of .

The law of karma is merely to enhance the beauty of those events that we have placed upon a timeline, and on the timeline each event has a cause. And so, we create a series of events on time, and time never moves. Time was a straight line we drew, put events on it, and then we come to experience it by putting another cover upon ourselves. The soul now wears a mind, then it wears another cover called sense perceptions, or the astral body, or Suksham Sharir. That is nothing, that Sharir is nothing but sense perceptions. It is not that it’s another body we’re putting on. Every time we think, because we use the word body or a cover, it must be like this body. The physical body is material. When you add sense perceptions to it, becomes a physico-astral body. You put a mind into to it, becomes a mental-astro-physical body. You put a soul into it, it becomes a living astro-physical body. The soul is the life that gives life to all these three functions that taking place now together. So, when you have sense perceptions, the area of experience is advanced so much for the same consciousness which was Total, and remains Total.

You add this physical body, then the interesting part of the experience starts. The most interesting part that you can have is when you have all these bodies, including a physical body, put on you. Then you become an individual entity, and you consider the physical body to be your self. You forget it is just a cover upon your self.

Then you say, “I can see with my eyes, I can touch with my hands, I can have all the experiences, sensory experiences,” forgetting those sensory experiences were merely covers upon your self. Then you think and begin to decide things. And thinking is a great, great wonderful thing. I don’t think we ever got a greater gift than the gift of a mind to use, and the gift of senses to perceive, and gift of a body to have, the whole thing condensed and made into a physical world.

It’s a very great gift to us to experience. But we have started identifying ourselves only with the body, as if the others don’t exist, they’re just part of the body, that they’re physical things. Physical body is the last cover we put on. These are three big covers. The fourth one, the original one of becoming a soul from Totality, is very subtle, and that is very hard even to express, because it’s beyond time and space— beyond any notion that we can have—beyond the mind.

So that is why, when we have all these covers upon ourselves, we forget how they’re all operating. We ascribe every activity that we have in this world to this body. How can you describe Love with this body? How can you describe Love, even with the mind? How can you describe Love with sensory systems? Love does not come from any of these. You can try to have Love with any of these; it never comes. It comes directly from your soul. Love cannot come from anywhere else. In fact, if you try to use Love in conjunction with these, very often we destroy it. The very first destroyer of the Love that we experience is our own mind. We think so hard that we destroy our own experience of Love. You fall in love with somebody, what does the mind do next? “Can I be sure? Do I really Love? Does he or she really Love?” What is this? The mind, which is a thinking machine given to us to enhance our experience, we’re using it to destroy our basic experience, the basic experience of Love which arises from consciousness and not from any of these covers. We’re using the covers to explain it away, and then destroying it. That is why we have other forms of experiences that belong directly to our consciousness, and not to any cover.

Apart from Love, another experience is instant knowledge. Intuitive knowledge. A knowing. A knowing and awareness that is not coming from thinking. We all have it. We all have intuitive feelings. Sometimes we give it the gross name of “gut feeling.” A gut feeling, a sudden knowing of something, is coming from the soul. It is not being generated by thinking. It’s not being generated by the senses of the body. And yet, we very often reject it with the same mind. “This intuitive feeling I have, gut feeling, doesn’t make sense to me. I won’t do it.” Next day, “I wish I had listened to my intuition.” Intuitive knowledge does not come from the time frame of a mind. It comes from our own soul. Therefore, we are now in a state where we came for a great adventure, with so much equipment with us, wonderful equipment: an ability to Love by becoming the many in one; the ability to have true knowledge, intuitive knowledge with our original consciousness; the ability to enjoy the experience of intuitive knowledge and Love through bliss, and through that great inner happiness that we could not find in anything else except that intuitive knowledge and Love— gives the greatest happiness we can ever get. And we closed it with a mind, so that the mind can communicate this, the mind can share it, the mind can speak, the mind can speak and communicate to a great experience—to share with other units of consciousness, other beings that have been created.

But we did not use the mind. We started getting used by the mind. Instead of using a computer, the most wonderful computer, with so much ability, instead of using a computer, we became a slave of the computer. We became slaves of our own minds. Instead of using the mind the way we want to use it, the mind tells us what to do. How could that be? How did we reverse this whole thing? Because we could not identify our own self. We forgot who we were, and we began to identify ourselves with the mind. “I think—that’s me.” Totally incorrect. “I think—that’s me” is not correct. Correct word would be, “I am life, I am consciousness, I have a mind, and I use the mind to think. I have a mind therefore I use the mind to think. It’s my machine to use.” We forgot that and made the machine identify as our own self. We forgot who we were. We forgot what life is. We forgot what consciousness is and began to take one machine, which we had started, which we are operating, as our own self.

When I came to the United States in the beginning and tried to talk about mind and soul as being distinct entities, professors at Harvard University were telling, “Whatever you call [it], mind or soul, that means the conscious self in the brain.” They would not even distinguish between the mind and the soul. They did not even distinguish between two functioning things in our own head, working in a physical body—one that is having the experience of love, intuition, joy, bliss, beauty, and the one that is rationalizing, sensing, making thoughts in our head—are two different distinct things happening. And they could not even distinguish between the two. It took me time to tell them, “These are different functions taking place within the human body, with the human self.” And we’ve even forgotten that part. We forget who we were. We forgot that the mind was only a machine given to us. And on top of that, the sense perceptions which were covered to enlarge the scope of perception.

So, the perception by the mind was total at all times, but we divided into seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, separately, to widen the scope of our experience. Yet we began to think they’re separate from the mind. The mind only thinks, senses are separate. And then we put on this physical body, through which the astral senses operate, through which the mind is operating, which have been all empowered and made alive by our own soul.

We’re taking this physical body to be our self, and we are living a life thinking this is our self, and whatever happens to the body is happening to us. The body goes through pain and suffering, we say “We’re suffering.” We can’t separate and even see that the body suffers, we don’t suffer. We’re not the body. We’re wearing it temporarily, and we can quit the body and come back into it anytime we like by quitting the consciousness of the body, and going into a consciousness of a higher self, which is possible while you’re sitting in the body, within this human body, which is the most complex and most wonderful thing ever created. I look at creation, I look at the vastness of space, I look at the microscopic nature of the molecular structures, of the atomic structures, of the neurons, and see, compare, “Is there something existing more complex, more wonderful, more well designed than a human body?”And I can’t find anything.

Not only does it contain so much physiological elements which make it remarkable—that having thousands of miles of nervous system running in a small compact body and several miles long of other systems running in the body, and blood carrying, and lymphatic uses carrying, and a system working so autonomously that we don’t have to tell the heart to beat, and it keeps on beating…we don’t tell any autonomous system to work—so many things are happening.

Did you know the largest organ in the body, which is the most effective organ, is none that they teach you in the physiology class. It is bacteria. Bacteria weighs, in an average adult, about three pounds. It is heavier than all the three organs of this heart, stomach and liver put together. I was talking about the functioning of these systems, and how the body is the most wonderful thing ever created. The more I examine it, the more I’m struck by wonder. I am struck by the physiological structure of the body, which is amazing, and most of it working autonomously without wanting my direction how to do it, so complete. And then on top of that, the working of the sense perceptions, which give me not only an idea there’s a world around me, they create the world and then I experience at the same time. They’re amazing feats being accomplished, that when you see things, we don’t realize we create at the time we see. It’s simultaneous. And the mind has the creative power, which it uses through the sense perceptions, to create perception. And whatever we perceive is being created while we perceive it. It’s amazing that we have no knowledge of any world around except through our sense perceptions. Sense perceptions are the only guarantee that there’s a world around us.

If we don’t have sense perceptions, the world disappears. And yet we think, “The world is independent of us,” and we’ve just come for a short time, because we identify with the body. Supposing you identify with the sense perceptions, supposing you can become unaware of the body, supposing you die. You’re still left with sense perceptions. What would you see? You see the world still is there because of your sense perceptions, not because of your body.

Your body was not creating anything. Your body was merely giving expression to an identity of yours. You were identified by one costume you were wearing. When we go to a theater, in an act, the costumes are being worn by these characters. A barber in my neighborhood use to act as a king on the stage, and he wore the king’s royal thing, but he was still a barber. When he came out from the stage he was a barber. When he was on the stage he was a king.

We have become kings of the stage, and we think we’re kings all the time. No, we were barbers somewhere else. We don’t know we were. Just by wearing a costume, we’re assuming the role that we’re playing as our permanent role. That’s not true. So, when we shed this outer costume, we discover who we are. And then we discover the sense perceptions have been created to generate the experience, which we were having in a dumb way, in a very diluted way, through the physical body.

We see, not because of our eyes, physical eyes, we see because we’re alive. We see because we have awareness. If you’re unaware, if you’re unconscious, you don’t see with the eyes open. Only when you’re conscious you can see with these eyes open. And if you take away these eyes, and take away the physical body, you will still see. Any proof of that? Sure, there’s proof right here. There’s proof that if these eyes alone could see, we could never see anything in a dream. We could never imagine anything and see it. What eyes are seeing those right in the physical world? We are using these eyes, we close our eyes—we can think and have a vision of anything we like. Which eyes are those that are seeing that? Which eyes can pick up from memory a scene that we can see? Which eyes can create an imaginative image in our head? They’re not physical eyes, but they’re eyes.

If you could remove the physical eyes, and still use those eyes, you’d find those eyes are responsible even for seeing with physical eyes, that physical eyes cannot see unless you have the astral, inner sensory eyes which see. So, when you die, you discover you can still see, and you thought that only your physical eyes were seeing. Physical body is lying dead, you can still see. But you don’t have to wait till you die to prove to yourself that this is true. You can pretend to be dead.

This is the secret of verifying all the things I am saying. Everything I’ve said to you today or any other day, is a verifiable thing. Verified while you’re still in the physical body. Verifiable today. And it can be verified by simulating death. That means, you don’t actually die—keep your body intact, but you simulate death. How do you simulate death? How do you pretend to be dead? You can do it by doing the same things which happen when the physical body actually dies.

If you’ve seen people dying, you’ll notice they don’t die all at once, they die in the physical body progressively, starting from their extremities—their hands and feet. They don’t know where the hands and feet have gone, and the legs have gone, arms have gone, beginning bottom of the torso has gone, goes up, the dying patient is still speaking in the hospital to us that he doesn’t know where these things are. And he tells us, “I don’t know, put my arms this side,” the arm is already that side. “Will you move my leg this side?” and the leg is already there. Patient has become unaware of the extremities. Ultimately, when the attention, the life force, is pulled up to the head, and the brain dies, the man is dead. It’s a process of gradually dying from the extremities of this physical body to the head. You can do the same thing while you’re alive.

You can do the same thing by discovering that what makes you know that you have hands and feet, what makes you know you have a body is your own attention on these areas. You are scattering your attention into these areas and creating an experience of a body. If your attention is withdrawn, you won’t know you have a body. The extension of your attention into the various parts of the body makes you know you have a body.

It’s not necessary to see it. You close your eyes you still know you have the same body. How do you know? Your attention is scattered there. And through the scattering of this attention, and the sense perception that operate inside this body, we have an immediate contact with another physical world. Attention goes there also. Imagine the nature of our attention. It is so scattered. It is scattered first through the body, then from the body all over the word. And then we have so much attachments, so many relationships with the physical world—it’s all spread out there. Every time we close our eyes, so many thoughts come to us about the rest of the word. It’s all attention, scattered attention. The scattered attention gives us an experience of our body, and of this physical world. If attention is pulled away, everything disappears.

If we can find a method of withdrawing our attention back to from where it flows, it doesn’t take long to find out where it’s flowing from. It’s flowing from the head, from behind our eyes. When we are awake in a physical body, if we say we’re a unit of consciousness with no form, just a unit of consciousness operating to know where we are, to know what’s happening, where would you find it?

You won’t say, “It’s in my hands or in my feet or in my legs.” You’ll know it’s in your head. It’s behind the eyes. You close your eyes, you’re still behind the eyes. Somebody talks to you from the right side, you turn right, because…as if you’re thinking you’re operating from here. It’s not difficult to know that when we’re in the wakeful, physical state, we operate from behind the eyes at a certain point, in the center of the head, which is the seat of our consciousness, sometimes referred to as the third eye, as the center of consciousness. That’s where we operate from. That’s from where consciousness spreads through attention everywhere. Now if we withdraw attention systematically, with a definite method of withdrawal, taught by somebody who has already done it, taught by somebody who’s very expert in this, adept in this, and we withdraw our attention progressively, we’ll forget where our hands and our arms are, forget where our body is, and eventually forget we have a body. And yet we’re still there, more there than we’re there now. We discover that our sense perception opens up in a way we couldn’t imagine. Here we had weak eyesight, we were using glasses. Suddenly our vision become so clear. Have you ever noticed that even if your eyesight is weak in the physical body, in the dreams you don’t wear glasses [but] you see very clearly? In higher levels of consciousness you see very clearly.

Do you know that you can’t have problem with smell if you’re having a cold? But in the sensory system, you always smell so wonderfully. And I do these experiments with you where I say, “Imagine flowers,” everybody is able to smell flowers without there being any flowers, just by using the internal sensory system. Always very accurate, sense perceptions grow to a remarkable extent when we don’t have a body. The body is not helping us to see, or touch, or taste or smell. Body is covering us up, so we can only little partial use of our senses. You become unaware of the body, and the senses open up. You realize: sense perceptions were not physical body. That’s a separate body.

It appears to be like this one, because the attention in the sensory systems is divided exactly like it’s divided in this body. That we can still feel we have legs and feet and that. But when we see, there’s no legs and feet, and...but still we feel we have. We try to walk in the astral body when we’re dead, or when we pretend to die, or when we simulate death by a special method. When you withdraw attention, and only move with our sensory systems, we find that we have no physical body, yet we can do everything that we could do with our sense perceptions. And then we find since we don’t have a body, if we like to fly, we fly—there’s no gravity left. That inner self of ours does not follow any law of gravity. Apparently, there’re different laws operating when we’re only using our sense perceptions. And that is why the sense perceptions, they take us up, and we have a totally new experience.

Now if we could do the same thing again. Supposing you withdraw your attention from the senses. Where? In the head which is still operating, in the astral body, in the sensory body. You withdraw yourself, and you withdraw completely from your senses, you are still there in a much more real way than you are here, or in the sensory body. There you discover that your life force, which is your soul, only is covered with your mind—the thinking mind and the creative mind that is around you is creating time and space.

There you discover how time and space were created. There you discover how events were placed there. There you discover how your destinies were made. There you discover how differentials between us took place. It’s all there. It’s not somebody else is telling us. We have it in us. Each one of us has this whole storehouse of information. Only if we were to become unaware of the external form, and go to the inner form, we discover these things.

But that’s not the end of the journey. That’s the end of the journey so far as your discovering what creates this world—what this world is all about, how you’re here, why we were here, how destinies were created, how the past, present, and future were created, how karma was created—you get all the answers directly. But you still don’t know who you are. You’re still tied up with the mind. Now, that’s the most difficult part, to leave the mind behind, and release the soul from the mind. That’s the most difficult part and that cannot be done by any method of withdrawal of attention. No method of meditation has ever done it. People talk of meditating and going to heavens, yes. All heavens are in the astral stage. You can go there. It’s still in space and time. Heavens are beautiful places. You can also go into hell, also lying there in the same level. You can go into high pleasure and very big torture at the same area. They exist.

Anybody can experience them. You can go into higher levels where you discover the universal mind as the mind of all minds and discover that’s the ultimate. But you cannot separate the soul from the mind by any kind of meditation. Because all meditation is somehow a physical exercise, an exercise on attention, and exercise on a mental capacity called attention. Attention is not a spiritual thing, attention is a mental thing, it’s an extension of the mind. When you put attention on something, you’re using your mind.

How can you use the mind to go over the mind and beyond the mind? Therefore, meditation stops there, and never has taken anybody beyond. Whoever claims that he has gone to a True Home—to Sach Kand—by meditation, is talking only of the astral stage. And people talk about it like that is Sach Kand, that’s our True Home. They describe it in vivid detail as if there is space and time where it exists. It does not. There is no space and time where a soul belongs. It is pure consciousness beyond all these.

So therefore, if you are within these three realms of the physical world, or the astral sensory world, or the world of the mind, the mental word, you go into cycles of birth and rebirth over and over again, no matter how high you’ve gone. Because all these forms of life, the physical form of life—not necessarily human—any physical form of life, have a time of birth and a time of death. It must be born and must die. The astral system of senses must be born and must die. The mind must be born and must die.

Of course, the time frame in which they exist is different. The physical body has a very short physical time of a hundred years, sometime less, sometime a little more. It’s not very...too much time compared to cosmic time we’re counting in our experience itself around us. In terms of the big bang theory and billions of lightyears and so on, it’s a very small-time frame. It’s like seconds in a clock. This small time is only the age of this physical body. And we are…when we think we are that, imagine how we reduced our experience to just a spec of time. The astral time, or the time of a sensory system which outlasts this physical body, and through which we can come to several forms of life, physical and otherwise, is one thousand to three thousand [years] of physical time, and the astral body dies and comes up afresh with a new birth. The mind, which is carrying all our karma, all our past experiences to generate new experiences observing the law of cause and effect, the mind itself has a limited time.

In terms of human physical time, it’s about three million years—is a good lifetime for the mind. After three million years goes, a new mind comes up. Mind dies, mind is born. Imagine if you are only going to go to these levels of experiences. You’ve not gone out of the trap of coming again and again within the same cycle of the three worlds. You’re still trapped in the three worlds of the physical, the astral, and the causal. The world of this physical body, the world of the sensory systems, and the world of the thinking mind. You’ve not crossed that at all. To cross that you must use something that lies beyond. You cannot use the system that operates here—body, senses or thinking or repeating words, or mantras—you can’t use any of these, or use any form of attention to go there. None of these work. When I was talking of the guru, I was saying on spiritual tradition a guru is God himself in a human form, is the creative power himself in a human form, because he has the awareness of Totality, the same awareness we ascribe to the Ultimate God.

But when we use the word God, the creator, we’re not even referring to the Ultimate. We’re referring to the creator of the physical universe. We’re referring to the God that presides over the astral system and the physical body. And because whole creation of the physical is taking place from there, we say, “God is sitting up in a throne.” Of course, he’s sitting there, and we’ve given different names to it. We’ve given names of that God who creates the astral and the physical . We call him God, Ishwar, Parameshwar, Allah. We call him Jesus. Of course, they all sit in time and space, and they can all be seen by anybody who goes there. It’s not necessary to follow one religion in order to see the creator. We have given different names to the same creative power that exist in the astral plane, from where these two worlds are being created. But we’ve not even discovered the source of our own mind when we start calling that creator as the ultimate creator. Even the universal mind, from where the whole universes are being created—the mind itself is creating time and space—even that is not our true God, true creator. Hardly…very few people reach there. Then they discover who they were calling God was just a creation of God himself, was not a part of the creative power. But when you reach there, that’s the limit. There’s no method we know of.

Therefore, if one wants to go to those levels, we can find the gurus—many gurus. Of course, a bulk of the gurudom in recent history, especially in Eastern history, in the history of India, China and those countries, has been confined to discovering energy forms, energies of different kinds within the physical body and the energy centers below the eyes. They haven’t even gone into higher awareness, and we still call them gurus. We call them yogis. The performance of yoga in the six energy centers below the eyes gives experiences of energy, has never given any experience of higher awareness. Nobody has become more aware of the nature of this creation, of the nature of the creator, by performing any kind of yogic exercise that goes below the eyes into the energy centers. How could it? There’s no God residing below. If there’s anything residing, it’s lying inside our own consciousness.

If our own consciousness in the wakeful state is lying behind the eyes, in the head, how can lower centers of energy which operate to run the system here, which operate to run our body and the environment around our body and experiences around our body, give us knowledge of God? The yoga has never given any knowledge of God, not this kind of yoga that relies upon the energy centers below. There’s no center of awareness below the eyes. All centers of awareness lie within the head, in the brain area only.

And they lie behind the eyes, in the center and above, nothing below. But when you put your whole attention on the centers below, how can you get any experience of higher awareness. But higher awareness has its limits. From the yogis and yogeshwars who are specialists in the centers of energy, which they call the six chakras, they do not go anywhere higher. But the gurus go higher, and they are many. Not too many, but many. And they are able to take us to the astral levels, where we see the heavens, and where we see the creator of these universes.

But even they have gone only one step on the spiritual ladder, and they are very few who can take us beyond the astral into the region of the universal, the universal mind. The universal creative power from where everything is coming, including the creation of the . But that is also not…neither our true self, nor our true creator, and we’re blocked there. Now, this is what distinguishes between the gurus and what we call the Perfect Living Masters.

When we say, “PLMs,” we’re not only talking of masters, we’re talking of Perfect Living Masters. What causes imperfection is the mind. Therefore, anybody who goes up to the region of the mind is not a Perfect Master. He’s still dealing with imperfection, because the mind divides everything, and by dividing, makes it imperfect. It cannot see the whole. The mind can never see the total picture, no matter how hard it tries. Its process of knowledge is based upon analysis—break things open and see. It lacks the process of synthesis, which consciousness per se has, the soul has, but the mind does not. The approach of mind always is to break things open and see how they operate. The approach of the soul always is see the big picture, what does it look like. It’s a big difference. Analysis—synthesis. So, the mind cannot actually discover the total, therefore it remains imperfect all the time. And all things that are mental remain imperfect.

All these three worlds are imperfect. When we talk of Perfect Living Master, we’re talking of no masters of these regions. These regions are producing masters. They take you to higher awareness also, but they will not take you to perfection, which lies beyond the mind. But there are some who will take you beyond. Again, very rare now. Those rare ones who have the knowledge and awareness of something beyond the mind, they come and tells us, “This is just a function of covers upon ourselves. Our true self is the soul, not these mind, senses and the body.” They try to take us beyond that, and the only process through which we can cross the mind is through something that belongs to the soul—Love. Only when you’re pulled by unconditional Love from the other side can you cross the mind. Because meditation doesn’t go there, repetition of mantras doesn’t go there, even listening to the sound does not go there. Only Love goes there. What we call the sound, the ultimate creative sound, the Word, the Shabd, is actually Love, and it comes from beyond the mind. When you experience that Love, and you’re devoted to that Love, when Love and Devotion becomes your method of spiritual life, you can cross the mind.

That’s a big deal to be able to go over, and gloss over these things like the physical body, cross over our sense perceptions, become unaware of our mind and senses, and then be pulled by Love, but that’s when you’re ready for going beyond the mind. When you’re ready, somebody’s Love, which is coming from beyond the mind, pulls you through this great veil, the biggest block coming between the mind and the soul. And when you cross that, you discover you were never any of these three things. They were covers upon yourself, the mind, the senses and the body. And then you realize who you were, the Soul. Such Masters we call Perfect Living Masters, or Sadh Gurus. We still don’t call them Sat Gurus, because they have revealed to us the atma. They’ve taken us to Par Brahm, which I quoted right in the beginning. That these are, Masters are Sakshat, that means, physical, visible forms of Par Brahm. They’re visible form, because they can take us right there.

And there, we discover we were a Soul, a unit of consciousness, a part of God, a part of ultimate creator, ourselves, and all things were created with the power of consciousness, of the soul. That’s the biggest discovery, and we still classify these Sadh Gurus as part of the spiritual Perfect Living Masters, because they’ve taken us beyond the mind. But even amongst Perfect Living Masters, there are others who will now take us even beyond the soul. The soul is also a cover. It’s a cover of individuation, to make you feel you’re separate from the Total. You never were separate. You’re merely a point of view of the Total. You’re always part of the Total, and those who take you to that point and tell you, “You are the one and the many at the same time, that’s your reality. You are the ultimate creative power. You are the Word that all these people speak about; other things are not part of this.” Those we call Sat Gurus, the Gurus of truth.

So, when we say Sat Guru, we’re referring to those. Sadh Guru, also Perfect Living Masters, take you to Par Brahm, beyond the mind, and reveal to you your soul. And then other Gurus—Brahm Gyani Gurus—will take you up to Brahm or the creative power of the mind. And then there are other lesser gurus who take you up to the astral plane. And there are gurus who are playing around with the energy centers below, whom we call yogis and yogeshwars.

So, I wanted to clarify to you today that these words are being used about a guru, and a Sat Guru, very loosely without people knowing what’s the distinction, so there’s a big distinction between these experiences that we have. If one is seeking in the heart only to find heaven, you’ll find a guru who will take you to heaven. He will take you to the astral plane, because all those lie there. So many masters have come in history who have promised you heaven, and we’ll go and live happily ever after till our term finishes [and] we come back into hell or come back into the world which we make hell ourselves.

Sometimes we don’t need to go to heaven. People can make this life into heaven, and also make this very life into hell. But the opportunity for us to play with the world here is great. There are souls having different forms at all these levels. Physical level, we see people around us—they all have souls, same soul. Soul is no different, identical. We see plants growing outside, each one has same soul. We have trillions of bacteria sitting inside us, each one—same soul. We have angels governing the guardianship of many over here, same soul. We have the creative powers of creators of heavens and the universe, same soul.

We have people living for millions of years in the higher regions, same souls. Little insect is crawling here, same soul. Soul is not different. Soul is the power of consciousness, the power of life that makes a form alive. These are forms being created. The forms are created starting from the causal plane, which give the concept of what kind of form can be created to the astral plane, where the forms take something that can be observed by the senses, which get color and shape.

The physical plane, we’re born as physical things, as physical species of life. So, these are forms, but the soul is still the same. Soul has no karma, never had, never wanted to, never got. Soul just made the mind alive, and the mind created karma and carried it. The mind created karma, soul picked it up. “Let me try this one, let me try a new mask now.” “Let me put on a new costume and see how that works.” And we picked up our own karma, we picked a karma laden on the mind.

Never belonged to us. Soul never has created, nor bore, nor suffered any karma. But when we put on a costume that’s undergoing those things, we think it’s our own experience. We took it for a purpose just to have the ride. We knew we could shed it and become karma free, but while we’re wearing that costume of a mind, which carries karma, we’re bound by the laws of karma. Then we put on sensory perceptions—karma gets translated into sensory experiences.

We put on a physical body, karma becomes an experience in the physical world. That’s what we’re going through. And we think it’s “my karma.” Not true. It’s your mind’s karma being played out through the senses and the body. You are providing life for the karma to play out. You’re providing life, and the life force, vital force to these covers upon yourself, to have different experiences. That doesn’t mean they belongs to you—you can step out of it. You can step out of it any moment.

The method that I’m suggesting to you is: why wait for a hundred years to die and experience what’s happening. Why wait for three thousand years for the astral body to die before we know what the mind is. Why wait for millions of years for the mind to die and then say, “We’re a soul” when you can find all that today, wearing all the costumes as they are. If we have the ability to find these things out while we’re still in the physical body, why not try it out now, when we can, and be happy forever, by knowing the truth about the whole show, knowing the truth that we’re souls.

Karma is a game we’re playing with our bodies, with our costumes, and the physical world is merely a show place. We’re actors, we have become actors, and we have got all actors created by us playing on a big stage, just because we have placed ourselves inside one mind and created other minds around, just because we have put ourselves in one sensory system and see all other sensory systems with their own minds as separate, just because we’ve placed ourselves in one physical character to watch from inside the show and created all other physical characters around us. It was only to make the show so interesting. It was not intended to trap us into this whole system and think this is the reality.

We came for a great adventure. I truly believe that this creation was supposed to be a great adventure for us, for the soul. We forgot it was for adventure. We began to identify ourselves more with the costumes than with our own true nature. And the costumes became our self. And we’re thinking we are the costumes, so we suffer. That’s why we’re suffering. That’s why life has become very different from what it was intended to be. But we can switch anytime. We can switch life from an area of suffering into an area of adventure, merely by gaining back the awareness of who we are. We don’t have to go anywhere, we just have to get back the awareness of who we are, how this, all these covers upon us are operating. If we can just do that, we can switch our life right now from one of suffering, drifting through, living terribly till we die, into one where we’ve come to put on costumes to see variety of experiences. Great show, great actors, great drama, great hype of the drama. We can see that right now.

It will change our experience. Not when we go back home. It will change our experience from here, from tomorrow, it will be different life. So that is why these Perfect Living Masters who come with that awareness, carrying with that awareness at all times. Not that they had once upon a time. They carry that awareness of Totality even while they sit amongst us here. When they come and tell us that this is not the truth—what you’re seeing, it was just setup. And set up so that you can go through the experience of a roller coaster, high and low, and the experience of becoming like your true self. They say, “Man,” which means human beings, “Man is created in the image of the creator.” I’ve heard that many times, and I always use to wonder, does it mean the creator also has eyes to see? Does it mean the creator also is like having a body or something? Not at all. The creative power is just a creative power. Then what is similar? How is man made like that creative power?

Only one thing is common between the creative power and a human being. The creative power has the will to create, and we have a free will to decide. That’s the only common thing, and that’s why a human being is made in the image of the creator. The creator willed, the creator willed all show to take place, and it happened. The creator willed in no time for time and space to be created, and all things happened by that will. And we have a free will operating as if we can create our destinies, we can create new things. We can make choices. We can do what we like. This is the common feature. Only human beings have it. Insects and plants don’t have it, animals don’t have it, angels don’t have it, Gods who run these universes don’t have it, because they have full knowledge of the whole will and we don’t. Our ignorance is truly bliss. That in ignorance we think we can decide what will happen tomorrow, without knowing that tomorrow has already been placed on the events list, way at the time of original creation.

Therefore, when somebody says, “Do you have free will?” the answer is yes. We exercise it every day. How can anybody say, “I don’t have free will.” You tell me, “It is written that you won’t drink water from here,” that’s the free…that’s will. Okay, I’ll break it. I just broke it with my free will. Supposing you said, “You’re going to drink water, because it’s written up there in destiny.” I say, “No, I won’t drink it.” I just destroyed this whole concept of predetermination by one little act. How can somebody say, “Everything is predetermined,” but I’m breaking it all the time? We’re all breaking it all the time. We all have free will. Then what is meant by this statement that everything is predetermined? Well, there are many considerations in this. One, do we believe in a creator, in a God who knows everything? Because we define him like that. God is omnipresent—he’s present everywhere. God is omnipotent—he’s all powerful. God is omniscient—he knows everything. Does he know I’m going to drink water or not? If he doesn’t know he can’t be God. If he knows if I’m going to drink water or not, my thinking whether I should drink or not also is known to him. That means what I think is my free will is actually not that free, because if he knows, I’m just thinking I got free will. Really I don’t, because somebody else knows. Therefore, on theological grounds, free will is ruled out. If God knows everything, we have no free will.

But we surely have an experience of free will. Based upon what? Based upon ignorance of what is going to happen the next second. Ignorance of what is going to happen the next five minutes. Ignorance of the future. Ignorance is making us believe that we have free will, and we’ll decide in our head, in consciousness, “I’m going to do this, or not going to do this,” which is the basis of free will, choice making. Because I can make a choice, therefore I have free will. Somebody has already laid down how I will make a choice.

So what kind of free will is this? But sitting here, if I claim, “I have no free will,” [it] is useless to say that. Because here I am having free will. People say, “If everything is predetermined, I want to…and not meditate.” Why? “I have no free will.” I say, “Do you know that your decision not to meditate is also part of the predetermined thing? How can you separate one part of your decision making from the rest and say, “Everything is predetermined, but I can do that?”

Don’t you realize if everything is predetermined, what you think you can do—that is also predetermined? Therefore, we get caught into this, because of the ignorance of the future, and the choice making still available to us. This is a very subtle thing that distinguishes a human being, a human form of life from all other forms of life. Because when we’re ignorant of the future, and we feel and experience free will, experience choice making, we can choose to go back home. We can choose to follow a spiritual path.

It might have been written up earlier, but at least looks like we’re choosing now, and because we’re choosing now, it works. No matter where it’s written somewhere else or not, at least here we make a choice—we seek and we find. Therefore, the question is, “Do we have a free will, or is it totally governed by God?” Now that question is very tricky. I’ll tell you why it’s a tricky question. Because when we say, “Is it our free will or God’s will that’s prevailing?” looking like our free will, we forget who is God.

Who’s God? God is our own Totality. God is our self in our Total form. Therefore, there’s really no distinction between God’s free will and our free will. It’s the same free will whether we call it God’s free will or our own because we’ve always been part of God—never separated. In fact, our total identify is the same as identity of God. It’s only when we go to the highest level of consciousness and realize the Totality of consciousness, we discover that that and us is no different.

When I was a child my mother said, “You should learn a little music also.” So, we used to have a musical instrument, called a harmonium in India, and many kids used to learn. So, I called a teacher, and he taught me how to play simple tune on the harmonium, and little song… The words of the song were very simple—refrain, short phrase—it said, in translation, a drop is addressing the ocean, and saying, “You are no different from me, we’re both water.” Today, I use that as a thought for the day every morning, that the drop of the water is no different than the water in the ocean, the essence is the same. And when we find out that not only essence is the same, but where are we located is all a much bigger riddle. As I was growing up again, and repeating to myself, “Dariya se Hawa kahe ye sada tu hor nahi mein hor nahi.” The drop is telling the ocean, “You’re no different from me, we’re both water.”

As I was repeating, I said, “What a senseless thing for the drop to have left the ocean, and now working hard to go back.” And people told me, “The soul is a drop from that ocean of consciousness, separated for eons—for millions of years—trying very hard to go back to its True Home and struggling to go back.” I also began to struggle. Then I thought to myself, “This is a useless struggle.” (I’m telling you of my own thinking as I was growing up.) Such a useless struggle, that if I’m a drop of water, I’m experiencing myself as a drop. The sun shines on me and spreads the rainbow colors on me, and I look so beautiful, and I’m so wonderful, I make little droplets of myself, and combine and become a drop. I’m having such wonderful experiences as a drop. What will happen if, after all my struggle and go and merge in that ocean, which is the spiritual path they were telling me? The spiritual path is, from the drop of ocean, struggling for eons, for millions of years, to go back and merge in the Totality of the ocean. I’ll be—it’s like committing suicide for me. I’ll be finished as a drop, nothing will be left. What will the ocean gain by one more drop in it? It’s the worse lose-lose game I could think of, and it’s called the spiritual path. Said, “How can one follow such a path?” and I was totally dismayed. Till the real discovery came to me much later. “Indeed, I am a drop of consciousness. Indeed, I’m a drop of the ocean, but I never left the ocean. I was always in the ocean.” What did I lose? Awareness that I’m an ocean. Awareness—my awareness was contracted to the size of a drop. And I began to think, “I’m a drop, all the drops around me, and I’m playing a game.” When my awareness expanded, I discovered I was the ocean at all times. I never left it. That made sense to me. That is the true spiritual path. The true spiritual path is you have never left your True Home, that you’re still there. You lost the awareness of it. And by creating a series of experiences, you felt you’re far away from your True Home. And when you go—rise from one level of experience to another—from one level of consciousness to another, you get closer and closer in your awareness to the Totality. Ultimately you find you were the Total all the time. That makes sense. Now we’re discovering our true self, which is very different from a drop going and merging in an ocean.

So that is why now it makes sense to me, that we should be able to enlarge our awareness to discover who we really are. And these steps we’re talking about, of expanding our consciousness, removing the covers that we wore in order to have different kinds of adventures, removing them and discovering that we were the maker of the will of all the characters, including the character in which we’re sitting now…we are sitting in one character in a play. If we were sitting outside, would be easy to see the play.

We go to a movie, the screen is at a distance from us. We are sitting in the audience. We see the show going on there, although we forget it’s just a shadow play. We forget they’re just pictures. We think they’re real. We even cry. We are, “Something is going to happen!” We are at the edge of our seat. “Now what will happen next?” Although we’re taking it as so real, we are not taking into the reality that we are part of it. We are separated it.

But supposing the show took place on a screen inside us. We’ll be rattled by it as if we’re participating in it, that we’re part of it, it’s our show, we are in it. So, to enhance the beauty of this show, instead of trying systems of 3-D, stereoscopic… So they put stereoscopic glasses now. You go and see a 3-D movie, different from other movies. It makes the screen come to you. In Orlando Florida, in the Disneyworld, there’s a show in which they wear glasses. They used to be green and red glasses— the movie was shot in two colors, from the distance of the eyes—and you could see things moving towards you. Now they use polaroid glasses which have no color, so it looks even more real. So, you wear those, and all things become because the two eyes have taken camera—two cameras have taken the picture in the same way the two eyes see. And because two eyes create sense of depth, therefore the two glasses they give free at the entrance of the cinema—you see things moving towards us. I went and saw a movie, and there’s a truck carrying lot of rats and mice. Suddenly the door opens, and the rats run into the audience. Everybody picked up their feet. [Laughs] And they could all feel the rats, because they had installed little air tubes inside the seats. And when the rats came, they put the air out, and you could feel the rats inside. Everybody screamed, “The rats have come.” It was a movie, nothing had moved. And then such a stink came, which also was placed in the chairs.

Imagine, they’re trying to make a reality to come to you from a screen by these little devices. And what a great device we’ve created, much better than these, by not sitting away from the screen, but sitting in the screen. Sitting inside one of the characters on the screen. Imagine the way you see a show like that. The physical world is no different than that. We are the same witnesses, the spectators of the show, sitting in one character inside, the consciousness and head of one character, and thinking we are that character.

If we remember we’re not that character, we are the audience, having placed our self in one character, and our body is a character like any other character around us, and then watch the show, your whole life changes from that moment onwards. Imagine, it’s all a game of awareness—it’s a game of what you know. If you know that it’s a show set up, and that you cannot change anything, the film was shot long ago… When we see a movie, it’s not being prepared at that time. There’s a film behind us. It consists of single shots rolled together fast, it moves fast, gives the sense of motion on the screen. There’s a light behind the projector. If the light fails, the film goes. If the movie stops, it becomes one shot only. It’s all based upon a light shining through a moving film, which is casting a shadow on a screen, and we think it’s real. Nobody in the hall, in the audience, looks back to see how it’s working. They only see and say, “It’s real. It looks so real.”

I tell a story of a young man from a—young boy—from a village in India who had never seen a movie. When he came first time to the town to see a movie, a Hindi movie, Indian movie, in that movie during one of the scenes, a girl comes to have a bath in a pond of water, and she’s taking off her clothes when a train passes in front. And by the time the train goes, the girl is already in the water. He never gets a chance to see her taking off her clothes, being a young adolescent very keen on seeing that scene. [Laughs]

He came twenty times to the movie hoping one day the train will be late. [Laughs] That’s how we live life here. We live life as things are happening—and they will change. They never change. And only a few steps inside can reveal to us where the movie was shot, where it was captured, in the causal plane. The movie was prepared in advance in the causal plane, and that is where we’re working out and just watching the movie by sitting in one of the characters.

Imagine, if you got this direct knowledge, not just by listening to me, but by actually experiencing that you are that, just place yourself to see a earlier prepared movie that you’re going through. Wouldn’t life change automatically? What would you do then? You would be sitting in the audience, which means in the head, smiling, enjoying the movie. When the body moves, other things are happening, all events are taking place around you, and you enjoy. And when you want to go home, you switch—go home, come back to see the movie in the theater called the human body whenever you like. Do you know this is possible? Possible right here. It does not require you to go into any caves, or into mountains, or into retreats, or into any jungles and forests to meditate. It only requires you to discover what is inside you, what’s behind your eyes, who are you. A discovery of who you are will reveal all this, and it can be done progressively, by the method of simulating death of one body over another, by withdrawal of attention. A meditation is a process of meditating upon yourself, and not meditating on anything else. Meditating upon yourself means thinking all the time about what is inside. If you just start this one, and every religion can do it, that’s the amazing thing. Christians can do it, Jews can do it, can do it, Sikhs can do it, atheists can do it, non-believers can do it. Believers in any other system can do it. Nothing to do with religion at all.

It’s a question of discovering who you are. And you discover by putting your attention behind the eyes and finding out who are you. Simple question. Ask yourself, “If I’m not this body, who am I? Who am I operating here? Am I sitting inside? What is my form? What is my shape? What am I doing here? Can I see from here? Is there anything around me? Do I see any patterns? Who’s seeing that?” Just going and asking who you are. And then, “Can I just do what I like? Am I bound by the body? Can I just get away and fly out? Can I do all these other things?” And you can. And, “Who is that which is within me? How is he having these capabilities of seeing, of flying?” Then you find you are the one asking these questions. You are the mind, thinking mind. And then you go further. “How can the mind think? Who is empowering the mind to think?” You go further, and you discover you are the life force, the vital force that’s making the mind think. You are that which makes the sense work, you are that which is making the body work. You are the soul. You discover the soul.

Simple process. Of course, you need practice. We need practice because we have been moving in the other direction all our life, taking the reality outside, not inside. Following the reality outside. Continuously trying to remove our loneliness of inside by making relationships outside, which never work. They work for a little while, then they break down. Nobody understands us here. Nobody loves us here. Nobody really cares for us here. We’re trying to look for something that’s far more akin to our own consciousness, the consciousness of Love, Joy, Beauty, and Intuitive Knowledge. That’s what we’re looking for. You won’t find it outside. And yet we’re trying to search very hard outside. So that is why when you withdraw your attention within, that’s the way to your true self, and to your creative self.

So, this is, in short, what can change our lives from now on. It’s not a matter of waiting for something. Religion promises things. Religion promises this is what will happen. says here and now. Religion makes you believe things on the experience of somebody else. Spirituality depends upon your own experience. Religion creates differences amongst us by dividing, and by saying, “This particular way is the only way.” Your own experience shows there was only one way. Religion takes us more into outward ceremonies and rituals, and inward you know, they’re all tying you down to outside things, and there’s no ritual required for finding your own self. Therefore, big separation between religion and spirituality. And what I am talking about is spiritual path, not a religious path. As it happens—and I’m very happy for that—as it happens, this spiritual path was the fundamental basis of all religions. Human beings departed from the expressions of this true knowledge by the founders of religion.

If you study very carefully all the scriptures we ascribe as “Word of God,” if we go to the scriptures, you’ll find that they’ve described the same thing, that the truth can only be found inside, that even a living God lives inside of us, the kingdom of God is within and not outside. They say the same things, and yet we go to worship in any of these religions, they tell us what to do outside. They don’t tell us to go inside.

So, we have departed from spirituality, which was the foundation of religion, into external ceremonies, external activities, which we call religion today. Yet I tell people of all faiths and all religions: practice your own faith. Practice—study first— then practice. We don’t even study. We just keep on repeating what we’re reading and think the repetition of words is going to give us . How can it? How can a mental activity like reading of words written somewhere still be called salvation? Has anybody ever got salvation by reading anything? I know of no instance at all. Whoever got enlightenment, got enlightenment from within themselves, and then they reveal to others, “If you want to find it, go within yourself,” and we don’t try that. That is why the spiritual path is a simple one. Like one mystic Bulleh Shah says, “Who says that it’s difficult to find God? You can get God just by pulling your attention from here over here.” Makes it so simple. It’s all a question of putting your attention where the self exists, where the creator of the self exists, and it’s always inside yourself, not outside.

We’ll have a short break, and some people have come from outside who’ve never met me—I’d like to meet them during this break. And there was couple of other people who had requested to see me in the break, and if they’re here they might like to come and see me.

Thank you very much! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qqzn898jhQ&feature=youtu.be

Published by ISHA. All rights reserved. This English transcript of a YouTube talk by Ishwar C. Puri is published under a CC BY-NC-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, and freely distribute sections of the transcript, provided that any derivative works or new resulting creations are not used for any commercial purpose and as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. License details: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Copyright 2019. Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA).